FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT KARACHI STOCK EXCHANGE - PAGE 3

When it comes to hitting centuries Pak cricketers may not be very successful at beating the Indian side, but back home their stock market has taken a huge lead over the Indian equity market in knocking up gains over the past year. If the 12% gain made by the BSE sensex in '04 was heady enough for you, brace yourself for a roller coaster as the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) index rose more than 9% in the last week alone. The KSE index rose 400 points on Tuesday and another 300 points on another to set a record.

ISLAMABAD: Until this year Fakharuz Zaman's Pakistani government salary was enough to get by on but now his weary wife lets their two-year-old son scrabble in the dirt for pieces of mouldy fruit. A wave of economic woes has plunged millions of families like Zaman's below the poverty line, posing a new challenge for the fragile coalition government and even overshadowing the threat of Islamic militancy. Spiralling food and fuel prices, power outages lasting at least six hours a day, a plummeting stock market and soaring inflation have all caused mounting anger in the unstable nuclear-armed nation of 160 million people.

KARACHI: Pakistan share prices closed down 2.9 per cent on Tuesday as the market continued to reel from the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and turmoil over planned elections, dealers said. The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange KSE-100 Index finished the day off 408 points at 13,667. It had opened down 3.8 per cent before a slight recovery. The latest slump came as Pakistan's election commission said the date for parliamentary elections would be announced on Wednesday, with a delay until February now in view following Bhutto's killing.

KARACHI : Pakistani stocks jumped by 4.5 per cent on Monday after President Pervez Musharraf announced that he was leaving office after nine years in power, dealers said. The benchmark Karachi Stock Exchange KSE-100 Index finished the day up 460.91 points to close at 10,719.62. "The market has gone upward now that the uncertainty regarding the country's political scenario is over with the resignation of Pervez Musharraf," said analyst Azhar Ahmad Batla of the WE Brokerage House.

KARACHI: Pakistan's key stock index fell 2.9 per cent at open on Tuesday on heavy selling after a terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in the eastern city of Lahore. The Karachi Stock Exchange 100 index fell 163.23 points to 5,518.06 in first few minutes of trading. Oil and Gas Development, the biggest company on the index, fell 3.2 per cent to Rs 53.24. "The market will nosedive if anything happens to any of the team players," said Habib-ur-Rahman, chief executive officer at Atlas Asset Management in Karachi.

KARACHI: Pakistan's main bourse continued its downward slide on Wednesday, with shares shedding another 2.9%, dealers said. The Karachi Stock Exchange-100 index lost 172.37 points to close at 5,865.01, they said. The market has now lost 36.2% of its value since December 15, when regulators removed a "floor" on the benchmark index imposed in August to stop such losses. Volume was 78.68 million shares?less than one-third of the 250 million shares traded daily last year.

MUMBAI: Pakistan's Karachi Stock Exchange certainly feels for its bear-hit investors. Or so it appears. In a move that would warm the cockles of investors, the exchange has set a floor price for all the listed shares. The floor price is the closing price of securities on August 27. The trigger for such a decision, which many consider as autocratic and bizarre, is the 41% fall in the exchange's main index since its all-time peak of 15,676 touched in April this year. The index has fallen 32% from the beginning of this calendar year.

KARACHI: Pakistan's stockmarket recovered to close sharply higher after a one-day trading halt as investors reacted positively to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's comments that war with Pakistan wasn't on the horizon. The Karachi Stock Exchange 100-share index rose 135.64 points, or 8.9 per cent, to 1663.22. Dealers said the market opened on a positive note because investors hoped the situation could return to normal after Vajpayee's statement and news later that the Indian prime minister had gone on a working holiday.

KARACHI: Pakistani shares were down in early trade on Thursday on falling global oil prices and as investors booked profits ahead of the long weekend, dealers said. The Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) benchmark 100-share index fell 0.82 per cent, or 122.84 points, to 14,841.58 on turnover of 39.55 million shares by 10:39 am (0539 GMT). The free-float KSE-30 share index shed 0.88 per cent to 18,077.49 points. "The energy sector is witnessing pressure as international oil prices continued to fall," said Asad Iqbal, managing director at Ismail Iqbal Securities Ltd. International crude oil prices extended their overnight slide by another dollar on Thursday, as fears gathered pace that global energy consumption could contract if the United States slips into a recession.

MUMBAI: Is Pakistan following India's footsteps? It may just be a coincidence, but striking resemblances abound between the two estranged neighbours. From privatisation of its public sector units to the stock exchange index crossing the psychological 5000-barrier, from the strengthening (Pakistani) rupee vis-a-vis the greenback to the bulging forex reserves, from increased focus on infrastructure ? like our own 'bijli, sadak, pani' ? Pakistan has taken the same road India has just traversed.